Quito . . . My Final Destination . . . Almost . . .

HELLO!!!!!!! Well, I have a FINAL last flying home date - September 5th, arriving the 6th. That´s it. In a week, I´ll be home. What a realization . . .

Well, it´s not over yet. What have I been up to the last couple of days. I spent one more day in Puerto Lopez. Seb and I rented bikes and did a 24 K bike ride through the national park. We stopped and hung out on a beautiful beach. It was a nice, but tiring, day.

That night, we got on the bus to Quito. It was the worst overnight bus ride of my life. Our bus drivers were high on cocaine (which didn´t click in my head until around 4 a.m.) and they insisted on playing loud club tunes all night, driving insanely, and beeping at every car that passed. Meanwhile, Seb was sick and throwing up into paper bags in the aisle. Needless to say, I didn´t have a moment of sleep.

We arrived at around 530 in the morning. Since we had plans to stay with a friend of a friend of Sebs who works in the French embassy here, we just had to grab a cab to his apartment. His apartment is huge (although definitely a bachelor pad) and he has been very welcoming. Seb is in heaven speaking French and having French food, magazines, and movies around.

We grabbed a couple of hours of sleep and then headed out to explore Quito. It´s a very pretty, relatively small city set (as many SA cities seem to be) in a valley surrounded by mountains. I had to get my flight arrangements in order, so I spent some time doing that. Then we ran into some friends and had lunch with them. More exploring . . . Then Seb´s friend took us out to a leaving party for a friend. We had a good time but called it an early night as we were exausted from the night before.

Today we made an early start and headed to the old town of the city. It´s a really big section of the city and the old buildings and churches are just lovely. We walked around and visited some of the churches. Fun. Interesting. Relaxing. Now we´re off to see the sun set from a viewpoint at the top of one of the mountains. Dinner with Seb´s friend tonight. Then tomorrow, we might go to Banos for a couple of days.

That´s all for now. I can´t believe that this time next week, I´ll be home . . . Wow.

Update From Ecuador . . .

Hola! I know it´s been ages since I´ve written. No, I have not fallen off the edge of the world. I´m still in Ecuador. I know my entries have been terribly infrequent since I got off the boat, but something about being on the ocean with no technology was heavenly, and my desire to run to the first internet cafe in town rather than sit on the beach has completely vanished. In fact, I have to drag myself here.

Well, what have I been up to . . . I spent about 4 days on Santa Cruz, where I did quite alot of hiking to see more animals and beaches. I saw giant tortoises, lots of large iguanas, and lots of different birds. One day, I took a walk to a canyon with water where you could jump off the rocks and swim. The water was cold, but it was neat and I saw some very large, colorful rainbow fish that I thought were very special. The town itself was quite nice. The food was very good and I definitely gained back the weight I lost on the ship catching up for lost time.

On Wednesday, I flew to Guayaquil on the mainland. I decided not to stay there but take the bus directly to a notorious beach town at the last minute (bought the bus ticket 5 minutes before the bus left). I didn´t know what to expect, but it was a great little resort town with great food, drinks, rustic but cute hotels, lots of hammocks, great beach parties and clubbing, and the best surf in Ecuador. I stayed for 2 nights and two days and enjoyed just enjoying myself.

Then Friday, I popped on a bus and came to Puerto Lopez an hour and a half away. It is still on the beach, but more of a city than the beach resort. It´s just on the edge of the premire national park in Ecuador. I took a fantastic whale watching-island visiting tour yesterday. It´s just the end of the season for whale watching. But, I saw tons of whales, jumping and playing. A couple got very very close to the boat (nearly touching) and two swam right under. It was amazing. The roundtrip boat ride took about 3 hours. The rest of the day was spent on an island that´s part of the national park. I took a 3 hour hike and saw loads of blue footed boobies and albatrases up close along with beautiful views. After the hike, the boat took us for swimming and snorkeling. I didn´t go in the water (as it was getting chilly), but I could see the big, brightly colored fish from the side of the boat. It was really an amazing day.

Today has been kind of a relaxing Sunday sleeping in and enjoying the town. Tomorrow, I´m going to spend the day at the national park and then I´m taking an overnight bus to Quito. My trip is coming to an end. I´m not sure exactly what day it will end yet. But, it will be very soon. As I was sitting on the beach the other night drinking a $1 Capirina, I thought - one month from now, I´ll be working, back to real life, and to think of this moment (every moment of the last year) it will seem unbelieveable that I was really ever here living this amazing life. I´m really looking forward to going home, and yet there´s so much yet to see of this country, this continent, this world . . .

The Truth About Sailing . . .

33 days at sea. 33 days learning to sail. 33 days of day watches. 33 days of being woken in the middle of the night to do 2 hours of night watch. 33 days of rice and pasta. 33 days of lecture. 33 days of learning to sail. 33 days with 7 other people on a 45 foot yacht none of which have taken a proper shower since leaving land. What more is there to say?

Somewhere over 2500 nautical miles, I learned how to sail a boat - how to set the sails, put reefs, shake reefs, sheet the Genoa, winch, pull, steer a heading, read the clouds, predict the weather, read a map, plot a course, plan a voyage, bunker a boat, identify the lights on other vessels and how they are approaching, follow the laws of the sea (written and un), frighten pirates away, leave harbor, enter harbor, anchor, do laundry on the back of a boat, clean myself with 2 liters of water and a small bucket, cook in a healing kitchen, and loads of other useful things.

Every day was different, and yet there was a distinct pattern to every day.

9 am - music on the stereo - wake up time
930 am - breakfast (gross bread and jam with tea at first but after 10 days, oatmeal and tea)
945 am - skipper of the previous night does weather survey of night watches, skipper of the day makes weather prediction considering current conditions and decides how to set sails
10 am - update the log book
1015 - 1230 pm - usually some sort of navigation excercise and sail movements mixed with a litte spare time to wash or study
1230 pm - lunch (rice or pasta with some variation of sauce)
1 pm to 4 pm - more miscellaneous time to study, wash, work problems, etc. (2-4 is technically siesta time, so it´s silent time)
4pm-5pm - lecture
5pm - happy hour (a drink or two (until we ran out of everything 2 weeks from land) and popcorn while listening to everyone who loves to hear themselves talk compete for the award of the most intelligent
730 pm - dinner (more rice or pasta)
8 pm - night skipper predicts the night weather and decides how to set the sails, sail movement done if necessary, night briefing, more miscellaneous time
9 pm - bed time, go to your cabin
9 pm-10pm - for me, journal and reading

*Add in your personal duties of 2 hour watches every 12 hours (for example 3-5 pm and 5-7 am), circulating cooking and dish washing duties, personal washing, laundry, and miscellaneous random happenings (catching fish, spotting pirates, getting caught in a fishing net) - and you generally have each of 33 days.

It was a great experience. I learned alot. The company wasn´t great - but sometimes ok. The Captain was an arrogant, unethical creep. But, I really feel like I learned alot and got some good experienc. And, I´m looking forward to learning more once I get back to Chicago. I´m going to try to get involved with some racing.

For now, I decided to end my trip in Galapogas instead of spending another 10 days sailing to the mainland and taking this yachtmaster test. While, I´m pretty sure I would have passed the test, I would have never used the license and it was never my goal for going on this trip. I have the mileage and the experience - which is the important part. My decision was based on the fact that I have a very short amount of time left (as we are 2 weeks behind schedule) and I´d rather spend my last couple weeks before starting work, exploring Ecuador and relaxing.

I had a good time in San Cristobal. It is very untouched. The highlights were watching the sealions play on the beach, snorkeling-swimming with them in a crystal clear cove as they played very near (they even bit my friend´s fin playfully-that´s how close they got), and going to a beautiful, hidden beach with crystal clear waters and big waves to play in. I came over to another island yesterday - Santa Cruz. It´s the main tourist island. It´s quite nice. A bit bigger, a bit more expensive, but beautiful. I spent yesterday exploring the Darwin center, the tortoise reproduction center, and lying on the beach. Today I´m going to take a 2.5 meter hike to a beach that´s supposed to be amazing and have alot of wildlife. A bit more time on the islands and then off to the mainland.



Roff wrote and asked for more info on the pirate insidents, so I thought I'd post my response here as well.

Now about the pirates! I think that pirates are pretty common off the Peru coast for small vessels. This probably wouldn't be something that big ships would have to worry about. It's just fishermen along the Peruvian load line who dabble in pirating. We sailed along the load line for most of the trip, but we tried to keep our distance. We always had a 24 hour watch for ships going. There were a couple of instances of interest. One day we were caught in a fishing net. In order to get ourselves free, we had to cut the net. Thus, the fishermen lost their catch and their net. We had about an hour left of daylight in which we jibed and changed our track to try to make as much distance before the fishermen returned. That very night, because of the jibe, we were so close to the load line that we had alot of traffic. We sail black not to attract attention. But, inevidibly, a fishing boat noticed our presence and came over to investigate. Our Captain has his own little trick for this. He suddenly throws on a strobe light and blinds them with it. This simulates a military/police boat. When he did it in this instance, the fishermen got all excited - screaming to each other and hightailing it out of there quickly. They are afraid of the police as they are usually fishing illegally. In another instance, some Japanese fishermen came over to investigate us during the day. In this case the Captain had myself and the other girl go downstairs and had all the men get on deck as a form of intimidation. These fishermen also left. There were no weapons aboard the boat. So, if we were attacked by pirates, our defense would be to shoot flares at their gas tanks to blow them up. Very hollywood!!! Anyways, I think that's all we had on pirates. Nothing too big, but it was always something we were keeping an eye open for.

On Dry Land . . . AT LAST!!!

I´m back on dry land . . . FINALLY!!! We made it to San Cristobal (Galapogas) on Saturday. It is a really relaxed, modern, barely-touristy, inexpensive island. I have only explored the town and the nearby beaches (filled with sea lions) so far. But, all the real wildless is outside of the city, and I am going to start trekking with the group tomorrow.

The sailing has been really terrific. It was a huge challenge to learn so much information in such a sort amount of time. And, to be blunt, the Captain of the ship can be a self-rightous jerk, pasta and rice can really wear at your nerves when you eat them every day without much else, and waking up at odd hours of the night every night to do a 2 hour night watch can be tiring. But, in the end, there is you and the ocean. And, I have loved it.

But, I will write all about it later. I am not quite ready to fall back into the pattern of technology. I have quite enjoyed the disconnection (although, I have missed everyone). I just want to spend some time enjoying myself for a couple days. Then, I will write all about my adventures on the high sea!